Last week, I highlighted the fact that the latest Press Freedom Index showcased a 13 point plunge in America’s press freedom to an embarrassing #46 position in the global ranking. If the authoritarians in the Obama Administration have their way, this country is set to fall much further in next year’s index.

Incredibly, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to roll out something called the Critical Information Needs study, which will embed government “researchers” into media organizations around the nation to make sure they are doing their job properly.

No this isn’t “conspiracy theory.” It is so real, and represents such a threat to the First Amendment, that a current FCC commissioner, Ajit Pai, recently wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, warning Americans of this scheme. He writes:

News organizations often disagree about what Americans need to know. MSNBC, for example, apparently believes that traffic in Fort Lee, N.J., is the crisis of our time. Fox News, on the other hand, chooses to cover the September 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi more heavily than other networks. The American people, for their part, disagree about what they want to watch.

But everyone should agree on this: The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.

Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission, where I am a commissioner, does not agree. Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.

The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about “the process by which stories are selected” and how often stations cover “critical information needs,” along with “perceived station bias” and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”

I have no idea what country I am living in at this point.

How does the FCC plan to dig up all that information? First, the agency selected eight categories of “critical information” such as the “environment” and “economic opportunities,” that it believes local newscasters should cover. It plans to ask station managers, news directors, journalists, television anchors and on-air reporters to tell the government about their “news philosophy” and how the station ensures that the community gets critical information.

Participation in the Critical Information Needs study is voluntary—in theory. Unlike the opinion surveys that Americans see on a daily basis and either answer or not, as they wish, the FCC’s queries may be hard for the broadcasters to ignore. They would be out of business without an FCC license, which must be renewed every eight years.

Should all stations follow MSNBC’s example and cut away from a discussion with a former congresswoman about the National Security Agency’s collection of phone records to offer live coverage of Justin Bieber‘s bond hearing? As a consumer of news, I have an opinion. But my opinion shouldn’t matter more than anyone else’s merely because I happen to work at the FCC.

Czech out (see what I did there?) what Snopes.com has to say about this. Rather unlikely that such an editorial was ever published in a Czech newspaper, and even if it actually was (again, no evidence it ever happened), there's certainly no evidnce it came from the former Czech premier, Vaclav Klaus.

The real danger to America are people who are so willfully blinded by their biases (yes, I'm pointing at you) that they acceot uncritically and perpetuate anything they see on the internet that that they want to be true, thus merely reinforcing their biases instead of making any strides towards becoming a truly informed citizen.

All I can say is, it's about time! Maybe they'll be able to get a handle on all this anti-Semite scream fest we've all been having to tolerate. The amount of bullshit I've had to endure, even here, is intolerable. I'm starting to think that maybe it's a good idea to require websites like this, to be licensed, and the owners attend a 2 wk sensitivity course. Speaking of which, I'm setting up a joint venture with ITT Tech, to do just that. Don't worry about the tuition though cuz you will be able to apply for student loans and grants:) just doin my part friends :)

Alex jones is a real American hero. You will never hear him try to frame the Jews for goy mismanagement and corruption. Yeah, he's one of the good ones. His wife's a Jew too! She's keeping his thinking straight unlike many of the troglodytes here on ZH.

According to Alex Constantine (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s, "some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts". Wisner was able to constrain newspapers from reporting about certain events, including the CIA plots to overthrow the governments of Iran (see: Operation Ajax) and Guatemala (see: Operation PBSUCCESS).

The fact that they're doing it publically now demonstrates to what esteem .gov holds the people.

To compare this latest false outrage by the oligarchs concerning research efforts that would show they fail to serve the public interest as their free broadcast licenses require, with actual government propaganda efforts, is to compare unicorns with horses.

It was only a few years ago an actual government propaganda operation got the American public on board with an invasion of Iraq based upon what are now proven lies about nonexistent WMD.

And one of the loudest cheerleaders for that war was the oligarchs' semiofficial press, the WSJ editorial page.

So what we have here is some false outrage by the oligarchs who run our country over a government program that would show these oligarchs don't meet the mandatory requirements of their broadcasting licenses. If I were an oligarch, I'd also try to get the rubes all riled up over this, because if the public found out that they actually owned the airways the oligarchs use to feed them shit it might end up costing them billions.

I don't know how to interpret this other than it being prelude to an internal coup of the Constitution by our own governemtn. Hope you like Obama as President because he may be in there for life. This is so brazen, they don't even care if people see through their lies and deceptions any more. I think they finally did it. They finally killed the Constitution.